The indeterminacy of meaning (especially when we’re talking about BRT).

Stories like this one from Markham Hislop in the SE Calgary News about a new “bus rapid transit” line make me very suspicious of BRT. BRT advocates make a big deal about how much like surface-level rail BRT can be. It can have raised boarding platforms, so the bus doesn’t have to kneel to let people on. It can have its own lanes and the same signal priority that surface-level rail can have. Stations can be set up to collect fares, so when the bus comes, no one wastes any time paying fares while they’re boarding. And all of this makes the bus go faster.

But Jacques Derrida says that meanings float, and transportation authorities say that any old limited-stop bus is “BRT.” I don’t know Calgary well so I can’t say for sure, but this article (and the video that accompanies it) really makes it sound like this new route is nothing but a big, articulated bus that makes limited stops. You know, like the B-Line. Which Translink has occasionally, and misleadingly, referred to as BRT. You say BRT and people think of Bogata’s awe-inspiring Transmilenio bus system. They don’t think of the B-Line gong-show.

In any case, this story from Wired says Calgary’s using these fake-BRT, limited-stop buses as stop-gap measures until they can extent their successful C-Train rail line, so maybe it doesn’t matter that much anyway. Still, why not call a limited-stop bus what it is, rather than what it’s not?

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2 Responses to “The indeterminacy of meaning (especially when we’re talking about BRT).”

I have no idea where Calgary is going with this. However, readers may be familiar with the example of Ottawa, where the regional transportation authority acquired right of way for “busways” in the 1970s. These aquisitions provided space for bus-only lanes for long stretches between downtown and the (then) most-distant eastern, western, and southern suburbs. The idea, as the official in Calgary says, was to build up ridership for eventual light rail service. Unfortunately, only the southern light rail line has been built in Ottawa – the “O Train” – with repeated delays in financing and construction of the rest. Even so, the busways allow riders to get from downtown Ottawa to Orleans (far east) in 21 minutes, with only three intermediate stops. This is over roughly the same distance as Main Street to Lougheed Mall, so is pretty good going, especially in peak hours.

Ian — Thanks for the info on Ottawa. It’s interesting to think about this incrementalist strategy (for lack of a better term), where a city could try to build up ridership on the cheap before putting in a rail line. It seems like a smart idea, except that it also seems like it would be very easy for a city to have their plans stall at the bus phase, as in Ottawa.

I also wonder about the effects of this sort of strategy for land-use. Would slowly building-up ridership with a limited-stop bus route help spur transit-oriented development around the stops the same way announcing, then building, a rail line can?